Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Central City, the Musical

Great big place!Great big place, gonna take up space!Gonna give you towers, turrets and skyscrapers,sidewalk fer the battle,villains to pull capers!Towers on the prairie where the Flash bugs Zoom,Plen'y of airand plen'y of room,Plen'y of roomto string a dope!Plen'y of depthand plen'y of scope.Central City,where the Flash comes sweepin' down the laneAnd gorillas greeton every streetWhen the wind comes right behind the rain.Central City,Ev'ry month Kid Flash is gonna trySome how to talkto some man-hawkfightin' giant insects in the sky.

The town we belong to is grandAnd you know that we long to expand!And when we say"Yeeow! Hey, Scipio is gay!"

Central City, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plainAnd a wavin' arm can sure do harmWhen the wind comes right behind the rain.Central City, ev'ry month its citizens and IStand on a sidewalk and point and gawkat the fallin' airplanes in the sky.We know that our streets can't be spannedAnd our city's too large to be scanned!And when we sayYeeow! Agoraphobi-ay!

You think too small, kelson! For Central City: The Musical, we'll have to construct a massive stage somewhere in the Great Plains. Hundreds of fields will have to be cleared of crops and thousands of people relocated... But it'll be worth it.

It's theatre, people. The stage doesn't have to be that big. The trick is to create the illusion of space. Clever placement of mirrors will allow the skyscrapers to appear to recede into infinity. And proper lighting can simulate the red-shift from some of the outer neighborhoods.

With the right set design the entire production could take place in an area only a fraction of Central City's expanse.

My brother collected the Flash and I read them and generally thought Flash was pretty stupid. Sometimes I felt like I wasted hours and hours of life that could have been spent reading Bat-Man or the Hulk or the Secret Society of Super-Villains.

But when you ridicule Central City, I get it, and I laugh and laugh. And I wouldn't get it if I hadn't read so many issues of the Flash. So I guess that time wasn't wasted.